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ISSYP Virtual

Here is your opportunity to experience, online, select content from Perimeter Institute's highly successful two-week International Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP). While we could reach up to 100 "young physicists" per year with our onsite ISSYP camps, our Virtual ISSYP opens up this fantastic learning experience for all to enjoy. The Virtual ISSYP is intended for students, teachers and anyone interested in learning more about the wonders of modern physics and the excitement of research and discovery at the frontiers of knowledge.

Making the connection between particle probability patterns and wave intensity patterns, leading to the famous de Broglie relationship.Learning Outcomes:• Repeating the single slit experiment with waves instead of particles. Seeing that the particle probability pattern is the same as the wave intensity pattern.

• Same as above, but for the double slit experiment. • Putting it all together to derive the de Broglie relationship between the momentum of a particle and the wavelength of a corresponding wave.

An introduction to spacetime diagrams – a first step towards understanding Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Learning Outcomes: • Newton’s absolute space and time vs. Einstein’s relative space and time. • Bodies move through both space and time – spacetime diagram “worldlines” show both motions. • Drawing worldlines for bodies in various states of motion: at rest, moving with various constant velocities, and accelerating.

Drawing spacetime diagrams of simple thought experiments involving sound in air as a warm up exercise for light in vacuum.Learning Outcomes: • Deepening our understanding of how to draw and interpret spacetime diagrams. • Measuring space and time in the same units – a first step towards unifying space and time into “spacetime.” • Why, for an observer at rest with respect to still air, the speed of sound is independent of the motion of the source of sound.

Continuation of a thought experiment from SR-2 leading up to a derivation of the familiar Doppler shift for sound in air.
Learning Outcomes: The real meaning of Newton’s assumption of absolute (or universal) time; Understanding the Doppler shift for sound in terms of a spacetime diagram; How to derive the (non-relativistic) Doppler shift formula for sound as a consequence of assuming Newton’s universal time.